WASHINGTON — Complaints of anti-Muslim bias in the United States shot up by 25 percent in 2006 as compared to the previous year, according to the annual report of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Released June 14 and titled Presumption of Guilt: the Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States, it said government acts accounted for much of the increase in reports of discrimination and bias.
The report, compiled annually since 1996 by the nation’s largest Islamic civil-rights group, said CAIR processed 2,467 bias complaints in 2006. That’s an increase of more than 25 percent over the 2005 figure of 1,972.
The number of anti-Muslim hate crime complaints in 2006 increased to 167 from 153 the previous year.
The report also noted that the proportion of anti-Muslim bias complaints arising in workplaces decreased significantly in 2006. While workplace complaints from Muslims constituted more than 25 percent of the total in 2005, that percentage was down to less than 16 percent in 2006.
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